Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang. Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health and hunger; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no concept of health or hunger. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, is essentially the same as Survival, but the difficulty is locked on the hardest setting and respawning is disabled, forcing the player to delete his or her world upon death. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features. The gameplay is heavily inspired by Infiniminer by Zachtronics Industries, and Dwarf Fortress by Bay 12 Games. Minecraft was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010. Official releases for iOS and Android have been released and the full version of the PC game was released on November 18, 2011 at MineCon 2011. The Android release was temporarily exclusive to the Xperia PLAY but is now available to the rest of the Android Market. A version of the game for the Xbox 360 with Kinect support is under development by 4J Studios, to be released as part of the Xbox Live Arcade Next promotion in May 2012. The game was officially released at MineCon on November 18, 2011. Minecraft was developed for about a week before its public release on May 17, 2009, on the TIGSource forums, where it gained a considerable level of popularity. It has been continually updated and patched since then, and while it was still in alpha release, it garnered several hundred thousand sales and received critical notice and acclaim from many reviewers. It passed a million units sold on January 12, 2011, less than a month after reaching Beta. By February 18, 2012, the game had sold more than 5 million units. Gameplay A player in Minecraft has a lot of freedom to choose how to play the game, with the primary goals being surviving attacks by monsters (known in-game as "hostile mobs") and building shelter. The core gameplay revolves around construction. The game world is essentially made of cubes arranged in a fixed grid pattern which represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, various ores, water, and tree trunks. While the players can move freely across the world, objects and items can only be placed at fixed locations relative to the grid. The player can gather these material blocks and place them elsewhere, thus potentially creating various constructions. Minecraft has three gameplay modes: Survival, Hardcore and Creative. Classic is the earliest free version and initially featured only the Creative game mode with only building (block placement and removal) aspects of the game and unlimited block supply. The game was then split into single-player survival mode (referred to as "Survival Mode Test"), which contained monsters and a much greater variety of blocks and items, as well as requiring players to mine their own blocks. The game starts by placing the player on the surface of a huge procedurally generated game world. The player can walk across the terrain consisting of plains, mountains, caves, and various water bodies. The world is also divided into biomes ranging from deserts to snowfields. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle. Throughout the course of the game the player encounters various non-human creatures, referred to as mobs. During the daytime, non-hostile animals spawn, which can be hunted for food and crafting materials. Hostile monsters, such as large spiders, skeletons, zombies and the dangerous exploding Creeper will spawn in unlit areas, such as in caves or during the night. Complex systems can be built using the in-game physics engine with the use of primitive electrical circuits and logic gates. For example, a door can be opened or closed by pressing a connected button or stepping on a pressure plate. Similarly, larger and more complex systems can be produced, such as a working arithmetic logic unit – as used in CPUs. The game world is procedurally generated as the player explores it. Although limits exist on vertical movement both up and down, Minecraft allows for an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, only running into technical problems when extremely distant locations are reached. The game achieves this by splitting the game world data into smaller sections, called "chunks", only created or loaded into memory when the player is nearby. Survival In this mode, the player has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from monsters, falls, or environmental damage, such as drowning or falling into lava. The player also has a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating various food (porkchops, bread, etc.) in-game. Armor can help mitigate damage from mob attacks, while weapons can be used to kill enemies and other animals. Health replenishes when the player has a full hunger bar or by playing on the easiest difficulty, where the health bar regenerates by itself. Upon dying, items in the player's inventory are dropped and the player is respawned at current spawn point, which by default is where the player started, but can be set by sleeping in in-game beds. The items can be recovered if reached before they despawn. The player can acquire different resources and craft tools, weapons, armor, food, and various other items. By acquiring better resources, the player can make more effective items. For example, tools such as axes, shovels, or pickaxes, can be used to chop down trees, dig soil, and mine ores respectively, and tools made out of better resources (such as iron in place of stone) perform their tasks more quickly and can be used more heavily before breaking. The game has an inventory system and the player is limited to the number of items they can carry, specifically, 36 spaces. The player may also play in a Hardcore mode as a variant of Survival mode, differing primarily by being locked to the hardest gameplay setting and featuring permadeath – upon player character's death, their world is deleted. Creative In creative mode, the player does not take environmental or mob damage, is not affected by hunger, and can fly freely around the game world. The player also has access to unlimited resources or items through the inventory menu, and can place or remove them instantly. All creatures in the game, including hostile ones, may still spawn under proper conditions, but they cannot damage the player. The only possible way in Creative for a player to die is to fall down the Void, the bottom of the map. Classic Older versions of Minecraft are also available for players. Unlike newer versions of Minecraft, Classic is free to play, though it is no longer updated. It functions much the same as Creative mode, allowing players to build and destroy any and all parts of the world either alone or in a multiplayer server. There are no computer creatures in this mode, and environmental hazards such as lava will not damage the player. However, some blocks function differently as their behavior was later changed during development. For example, in Classic mode, TNT will act like any other block and break when hit, but in newer versions it will detonate after its fuse is lit. You can play it for free here Primary win condition Although Minecraft is mostly a sandbox game, it contains some adventure elements. And, with that, a primary win condition, which is achieved by traveling to another dimension known as The End and defeating the powerful Enderdragon that flies around the map. This dimension is also home to the Endermen, a race of seemingly-sentient beings that are rarely seen on the main world. To find The End, one must locate underground ruins of an ancient civilization (referred to ingame as Strongholds) which can be found on the main overworld. They must then activate the stronghold's portal using two different items, one dropped by Endermen and one dropped by Blazes from the Nether dimension. Upon beating the boss creature (and claiming an exclusive reward), the player is allowed to leave the dimension via a portal, which will cue the game's ending sequence, written by Irish author Julian Gough, and credits roll. The player is then teleported back to their original spawn point in the overworld, and, if certain criteria are met, will receive the exclusive "The End" achievement. External Links Official website Minecraft Forum Minecraft Wiki, official Minecraft Wiki Persson's development blog on Tumblr